Monoidal algebraic model structures

Abstract

Extending previous work, we define monoidal algebraic model structures and give examples. The main structural component is what we call an algebraic Quillen two-variable adjunction; the principal technical work is to develop the category theory necessary to characterize them. Our investigations reveal an important role played by “cellularity”–loosely, the property of a cofibration being a relative cell complex, not simply a retract of such–which we particularly emphasize. A main result is a simple criterion which shows that algebraic Quillen two-variable adjunctions correspond precisely to cell structures on the pushout-products of generating (trivial) cofibrations. As a corollary, we discover that the familiar monoidal model structures on categories and simplicial sets admit this extra algebraic structure.